COUNTDOWN: 12 DAYS

When one is advised on how to behave with confidence, it is routinely recommended to act as if you already have what you want. Gaston dripped confidence without effort, and thus readily formed these peculiar imaginings that some would deem, disparagingly, as entitlement or arrogance.

He was dressed in his best suit. He was incredibly tired, but too excited to show it: he had been up late making arrangements, up early making preparations, and the bit of sleep caught in between was interrupted by the vivid thrills that seized him when he considered that soon he should be resting with Belle in his arms.

And to think, LeFou had spent all evening trying to talk him out of this!

Gaston read other people's emotions about as well as he read Sanskrit; and with added hearts and flowers obscuring his worldview, he was hopeless. A surprise wedding seemed perfectly appropriate, by his reasoning. Women loved weddings, right? And doing it while her father — the primary rival for her attention — was gone, was the best time of all to get it done. She'd be thrilled! If Belle had done it to him, he'd have been so proud of her.

He hadn't proposed yet, of course. That was the method in his madness — he didn't want her doing all this thinking and imagining that would distract her for days or weeks, planning a wedding, making him wait. This way there was no excuse — she'd say yes, they'd have a party, and then straight away to happily wedded bliss and the beauty of it all!

As he knocked on the door, he noticed for the first time a little glass lens before him, set into the wood. His reflection was mirrored very small upon it, and he began to admire what he could, tilting and turning his head.

Soon he could hear Belle unlatching the door. Too eagerly, he pushed it open, nearly banging into her on the other side.

"Gaston!" Belle nervously proclaimed, stepping back to avoid injury. "What a pleasant surprise."

Gaston strode in, puffing up as he gathered his confidence to its capacity. "Isn't it, though? I'm just full of surprises." He knew he had to be quick — didn't want to keep LeFou and the others waiting, not to mention she would probably notice the wedding set up in her yard sooner or later. "You know, there's not a girl in town who wouldn't love to be in your shoes," he said, not at all exaggerating. "This is the day…"

He caught his reflection in a mirror as he walked through the room. More anxious than he was letting on, he paused instinctively to examine himself. He suddenly observed that there was something in his teeth and he hurried to dislodge it, hoping Belle hadn't noticed.

"This is the day your dreams come true!" he said, as if nothing had happened.

"What do you know about my dreams, Gaston?" she said, almost laughing at his bizarre antics. She wondered if this might be another circus act he was putting on.

"Plenty!" he replied to her, thinking himself quite earnest. He remembered her in the streets, singing of her dismay with the townspeople, longing for more. He began trying to conjure the image before her of how much more he could provide and what a different existence could be:

"Picture this. A rustic hunting lodge, my latest kill roasting on the fire, and my little wife, massaging my feet…" Gaston was so lost in the beautiful image that, without realizing what he was doing, he was beginning to act it out. Unnoticing, he had removed his boots and propped his feet up on the table for her to massage. "…While the little ones play with the dogs," he continued. "We'll have six or seven."

"Dogs?" asked Belle, reacting to his behavior with a very appropriate disgust, which Gaston also did not notice from the depths of his fantasia.

"No, Belle!" he laughed. Silly girl. "Strapping boys, like me!" He beat his chest emphatically. Couldn't she just see it?

"Imagine that," said Belle, indeed seeing it all too well, and turning from him in dismay.

"And do you know who that wife will be?" he asked, rising to pursue her.

"Let me think," said Belle, quite perturbed. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming, and she was trying to find a way out of it without offending the seven feet of conceit beside her.

"You, Belle!" he gushed. The perfect vision was complete. There was nothing else to see, hear, feel. Everything was for them as a pair; for them to become a pair, bound to each other for all eternity, encountering all the joys they had lacked alone, needing only to reach out and embrace their desires once they were fortified by each other's strength. He tried to wrap his arms around her, but she squirmed out from under him.

"Gaston, I'm speechless," she said, backing away. "I really don't know what to say."

He mechanically followed her, blindly banging into furnishings and knocking them out of his way, the thumping of his heart obscuring their clatters to the floor. "Say you'll marry me," he urged, cornering her against the door where she had pancaked herself.

He expected a yes. He leaned in, ready for his longed-for first kiss…

She said something in a hurry, and then all of a sudden the world fell down.

…

Gaston couldn't have even explained how he ended up in a mud puddle two-hundred feet across the yard from the house's front door. But there he was. There was a moment required to orient himself in the dark liquid, the bottom five inches of which were pure pig shit, softened in the piss-stinking water. He felt something slither through his fingers as he pushed himself upright. He emerged with an actual fucking pig on his head, and LeFou's smiling, inbred face beaming before him.

"So, how'd it go?" asked a cheery LeFou, pushing aside some of Gaston's soiled hair with a conductor's baton.

How it went — how did he even get in this puddle? — and LeFou was the social one, he could tell damned well how it went —

Gaston grabbed LeFou by the throat, outraged.

"I'll have Belle for my wife!" cried Gaston. "Make no mistake about that!"

He slammed his cousin into the filth as he himself emerged.

Storming away, dripping, cold. All the warm, fuzzy feelings enjoyed for the last three days had instantly crashed away into… into…

It wasn't an unknown feeling.

Gaston himself knew that good things did not come of heavy thought. His mind tended to go into dark places once he got thinking.

Dirty, confused, outraged and humiliated, he tried to push the memories away. His arm ached, phantom pain at the recollection of breaking it. He winced and wiped at his nose. It too hadn't ever been the same since someone broke it, years ago.

Feelings were creeping all over. He strove to keep the complex emotions away…

But Belle…

"Hey, Gaston?" a man asked as he passed over the bridge into the village. "What's with the coating? You taken up mud wrestling?"

Gaston busted the fellow in the gut, and kept moving.

Belle. Belle. How could she? Why would she? It couldn't have been malice that motivated her. Everyone knew about physiognomy, how wickedness would mark the face of those who lived it — there was not a hint of that upon Belle, unlike anyone else in the village. What could it have been, then? A hysterical fit? A test of loyalty?

"Whoa, Gaston!" cried the booze smuggler out on his break from smuggling booze. "Are you alright? You look — "

Gaston elbowed the man out of his way so hard that he knocked him to the ground.

Could it really have been that she meant to say no? But why? What advantage could she possibly find in that?

Jesus. Could it really be that… Belle didn't like him?

Gaston found the door to his house blocked by a group of starry-eyed girls who looked to be about thirteen years old. The initial joy that sparkled on their faces at seeing the famed Gaston was immediately swept away when he came charging at them like they were skittles and he was an especially pissed off bowling ball. They scattered, squealing in fright.

Gaston sprang into his home and slammed the door shut behind him. He knew LeFou was not in; he was alone. He now did not hesitate to burst into the bitter tears that he'd been holding back since departing from Belle's house.

When he was young, the fact that he would sob and beg when he'd lost a fight had provided infinite amusement to his bullies. Now, the shock of such a humiliating rejection when he had harbored every expectation of finding lifelong joy on this day was beyond devastating.

He gnashed his teeth and tried to get control of himself. He was an adult now, not a little kid. He had to be tough. No more tears. What did a man do when he was angry like this? Why, a tough, strong man would grab her and…

No. He was not going to do such a thing to Belle. He had too much pride for that.

It was very easy for one who had seen Gaston's behavior to suppose that he didn't care at all about Belle's happiness. That wouldn't be true — in his mind, she should have every reason to be happy with him. He wanted her to be happy with him so that they could be happy together. It truly didn't make sense to him why she wouldn't like what he was offering. He'd worked hard to make himself into what he was, everyone else wanted a piece of him, and he was offering to share that with her and no one else. What was wrong with her that she wouldn't take a treasure that was offered?

Was there… something wrong with him?

His thinking over Belle had distracted him from his foremost problem, which was really the need to get himself cleaned up. There were a couple jugs of water on hand, enough to maybe wash his face and hair, but nothing near what he needed to scrub his whole body clean of pig stink. When Gaston finally quit thinking long enough to realize this, he groaned aloud. He was going to have to go back outside to the public fountain.

Teeth clenched and cursing the whole way, Gaston marched from his house, puffed up and radiating such outrage that everyone could see plainly that they shouldn't tangle with him.

He climbed into the town's water fountain, frightening away some washer-women with his presence. Still fully clothed in his badly soiled suit, he crouched under the water jets and let them rinse his hair and face clean. The mud in his clothes thinned and washed out to only a faint dinginess. All the while he kept his face stiff and his body tense, ready to spring into a violent action if anyone dared suggest that what he was doing wasn't something completely normal and absolutely dignified, the cunts!

He gazed down at the water below, observing how it grew contaminated by his presence. Then he caught sight of his reflection, and he stared.

…

LeFou and the rest of the wedding party had passed a few hours in Belle's yard, eating the wedding cake and discussing what a stuck up bitch that Belle was.

"The girl is just crazy, I can't imagine why Gaston fell for her of all people!" said Joujou Gautier, of the locally-famed Gautier triplets. They were so famous, they'd been written up in a newspaper when they were born — and they were known to be some of the biggest fans of Gaston.

"Well," said sister Dodo Gautier in turn, "she is pretty, you have to give her that. I'd kill for that skin. Like it's never been touched by mange!"

The Gautier girls all muttered that Belle really did have fantastic skin.

"And she does have a figure like the dress models in Paris," added Lolo Gautier, "that tall, straight up and down. No rickets at all."

They agreed, she was very free of rickets.

"And," added Dodo, "I think she has all her teeth, like real teeth instead of wooden dentures like us!"

The girls all sighed lamentably, acceding that Belle really was the prettiest woman in town.

Gaston's friend Stanley spoke up. "But what you girls forget, is that beauty's more than skin or bone or mouth-deep. That arrogant girl, Belle, just goes around, acting like she's better than everyone because she reads more! She's always reading in your face, shouting 'Oh, isn't this amazing!' while you're shooting dice in the alley, then you end up throwing the dice on her book and she walks off with them. If she weren't under Gaston's protection, I'd teach her a lesson myself about humility."

"But that's why Gaston likes her," argued Limey Bastard. "He might not know it himself, but that's why. It's not her beauty, it's her pride. He's a proud one, too. The pair of them absolutely belong together — "

The speculation over Gaston's reasons for preferring her were interrupted when they noticed that the Clydesdale horse Maurice owned had come racing back to the house without a rider. They shook their heads and remarked on crazy old Maurice getting into another scrape while they finished cleaning up and bearing off the tables and chairs that had been brought. From thence they decided they had better head on over to Gaston's house to see how he was getting along.

By the time they arrived, Gaston was back inside. He had cleaned up and changed into his red shirt and black leggings. It was the same outfit he'd worn the last time he talked to Belle before the wedding. He also donned all of his weapons, like fashion accessories, attempting to make himself look more macho and tough so that he might feel more macho and tough.

It wasn't working.

He felt cold. Empty, like his might, his good, his energy, had all dried up and left him a dead and brittle shell. He stared at himself in the mirror, his handsome face grown pale.

What was the point of it? What was the point of drawing the unwanted attention and nuisance from the others, if the only one he wanted still could not — would not — be his? All the work he'd done these last ten years, was there any point to it? He'd already worked harder than anyone else in town at improving himself! If that hadn't succeeded in making him better…

When LeFou greeted him, Gaston could only bring himself to throw a chair in response.

"Aw, come on, Gaston," said Stanley, stepping forward while LeFou recovered from the concussion. "You're not still sore about Belle, are you? Forget her!"

Gaston just shook his head and leaned himself against the mirror, staring eye to eye with his own reflection. "She's rejected me," he moped, gloom seeping from each word. He was utterly traumatized. "Did I do something wrong? Do I need bigger pecs or something? What's wrong with me?!"

At that, he yanked the mirror from the wall and violently smashed it on the floor.

His friends were stunned. Only LeFou had ever seen Gaston in this condition before — and nothing good had ever come of those times LeFou had seen it. This was cause for grave concern.

Limey Bastard stepped up, trying to offer some encouragement. He was old enough to be Gaston's father — indeed, had known his father, Avenant, back in the day. He was presently a business partner with Gaston, but he still had that double-lifetime of experience over him, which he was now trying to leverage. "The right girl for you is probably right under your nose, and you just haven't been hunting in the right places! Right? Right!"

Gaston turned to him, clenching his fists in preparation for a few punches. "And where do you propose I look?" he asked bitterly.

"Well, you sure aren't going to find her in here," interjected Limey Bastard in a cheerful tone. "Come on! Let's go to the tavern! You know we get all the beer we can drink!"

The tavern, full of people, all looking for socializing and affection. That wasn't the place for him, Gaston knew already. He shook his head. "I just want to stay and… think," he moped.

LeFou blew a raspberry. "Thinking!" he cried, flipping his wrist. "That's what gets that brainiac girl to make dumb choices like refusing you!"

"Yeah," declared Limey Bastard, coming towards Gaston and putting a friendly arm around him. "You don't need to think. You need alcohol to stop all those thoughts from taking over your beautiful mind!"

Gaston was big, and there wasn't a man in town who could overtake him. But, a large group of friends all making a combined effort were able to physically push him downstairs, across the road, out to the tavern, help him off with his weapons, and sit him down in his favorite chair of dead animals.

…

A man as large as Gaston did not grow intoxicated easily, especially off something as weak as ale. He was consequently not growing as numb to his feelings as his friends had hoped. All the deluge of beer really did was mess with his bladder.

While Gaston went to relieve himself, his friends conferred together to revise their strategy.

"You think a guy like him gets a beer buzz? We'd have to pump the stuff into every orifice he's got," said Stanley.

LeFou contemplated the case history of his cousin. "Gaston's not one to drink away his problems. He thinks it's lazy. Says it's why everyone around here is so fat. He either goes out and does something about it, or else he mopes in front of a mirror until he forgets what he was mad about."

"If you ask me," said Dic, "he got lucky that that stuck-up girl didn't want to marry him. She'd have probably put him to cook, clean and shop so she'd have time to read all those dirty books of hers."

"That's it!" cried LeFou, attempting to snap his fingers emphatically, but failing. He started rubbing his fingers together over and over, failing to snap them and wondering what he was doing wrong. "Um, anyway," he said, remembering the conversation, "We just need to remind him what a crazy, dumb bitch that Belle is! He'll be glad he got rid of her while the getting a-rid of was good!"

There were murmurs of accord between the men. A thorough disparagement of Belle was their new mission.

"Now, don't say anything too harsh, or he'll start defending her," whispered Thom, as Gaston could be seen re-entering. "Just stick to the facts."

The men murmured agreement, and then they got to work on their poor inamorato, who passed and plopped into his armchair, staring blankly into the fireplace.

"I still can't believe that a girl can put one over on you," called Stanley. "Are you really going to take something like that from a person who reads books?"

The men nodded. Gaston raised his eyes, like he was at least listening.

Limey Bastard gave it a try. "And what does it matter if she's beautiful?" he started. "She wears a man's hairdo. You know what that means."

The men murmured further agreement.

Now LeFou, grabbing two beers from the bar, ventured quite a risky statement. "And she barely ever leaves her house. Jeez, you want someone like that, you might as well hang around with Michel."

Gaston fortunately took the reference to his brother well, or at least as intended. It began to dawn on him that perhaps Belle knew what she was doing but, being a woman — which was by itself a mental deficiency — she couldn't really be responsible for her behavior in the same way that a man could. The cruelty of her rejection was a natural reaction of her species, born of female haughtiness and pride, rather than pure sadism. "You're right!" Gaston slugged back the last of his beer and tossed away the mug in a show of aggravation. "Who does she think she is?" He began to simmer. "That girl has tangled with the wrong man! No one says no to Gaston!"

"Ha! Darn right!" cried LeFou, bringing over a new beer for Gaston and one for himself. He was smiling — the plan was starting to work.

"Dismissed!" moaned Gaston anxiously. "Rejected!" he cried with a building fury. "Publicly humiliated!" he screamed seizing the two beer glasses from LeFou and tossing them into the fireplace. "Why, it's more than I can bear!"

"More beer?" LeFou asked helplessly.

"What for? Nothing helps!" lamented Gaston, sinking like a popped balloon. "I'm disgraced."

"Who? You?" said LeFou in a rush to draw him back up. "Never! Gaston, you've got to pull yourself together. Gosh, it disturbs me to see you, Gaston, looking so down in the dumps. Every guy here'd love to be you, Gaston, even when taking your lumps. There's no man in town as admired as you. You're everyone's favorite guy…"

LeFou went on with this type of praise and reassurance, reminding Gaston of all his good qualities. Soon he got Thom, Dic, Stanley and Limey Bastard joining in and performing feats of entertainment, like they were trying to entertain a sad dog with some chewed up toys.

Still, it was LeFou's remark, "No one's got a swell cleft in his chin like Gaston!" that finally got the big man himself into the spirit.

"As a specimen, yes, I'm intimidating!" Gaston smiled, flexing his muscles for the benefit of the party to admire.

But the warmth that was beginning to radiate in his breast flickered when he heard someone call out the name — "Maurice!"

He turned to the door, and there, in the doorway, was Belle's father — who hardly ever came into the tavern. To see him here now was some kind of omen, for sure.

The vieillard raced into the place, crying frantically. "He's got her — he's got her locked in the dungeon — "

"Who?" someone asked.

"Belle!" cried Maurice. "We must go — not a minute to lose!"

Gaston took action. "Whoa! Slow down, Maurice. Who's got Belle 'locked in a dungeon'?" The story sounded ridiculous, but perhaps there was something to it.

"A beast!" cried Maurice. "A horrible, monstrous beast!"

Ah. There was nothing to this, thought Gaston. Maurice was simply being weird and wacky as usual. Probably got a knock on his head while blowing himself up again. Served him right for having a haughty book-reading daughter like Belle. "Alright, old man," said Gaston. "We'll help you out." He made a signal to his friends, who grabbed up the old fellow.

Maurice began to thank Gaston profusely without comprehending that the boys in the bar were hauling him to the door. Then the floor swung out from under him, and the tavern door slammed shut in his wake.

"Crazy old Maurice," said Thom, dusting his hands despite that he had not actually handled Maurice at all.

"He's always good for a laugh!" exclaimed Dic.

It was like a bolt of lightning had suddenly hit Gaston. "Crazy old Maurice? Hm!" he said aloud. "Crazy… old… Maurice… hmmmm…"

The plan entered his head almost fully formed. Perhaps, in some manner it had been sitting there all ready and waiting, like a seed pod, just wanting the chance to take root and bloom.

One thousand one hundred and thirteen days earlier, he had been on a routine visit to the Asylum de Loons…

The asylum was run by Monsieur d'Arque, a man from a noble enough family to have a de in the name but not so high and mighty that he didn't require an occupation. He was a white haired old man who looked as if he'd died and been dug up again. He suffered from the green sickness, and had a habit of drinking large amounts of sherry in an effort to alleviate his symptoms. His perpetual drunkenness left him with a peculiar, slow pattern of speech.

This gentleman was a true aristocrat — generous and malign at once, always willing to offer a helping hand unless he didn't want to.

The young Gaston adored this man, who almost felt like the father he'd never had. Part of it was because d'Arque always glowered at him with a slight disdain — the pretty young Gaston was so accustomed to people eyeing him like a piece of meat, that it made him immediately comfortable not to be hunted by someone. But he also admired d'Arque's strange rants on moral philosophy, which were so very different from the eat your vegetables, marry and reproduce, work hard, and God hates fags mindset that he picked up within the village. This man's ideas were new. They were… interesting. Exciting.

These visits were made possible by his brother Michel's residence at de Loons. Two years younger than his big brother Gaston, the poor boy had been born with a variety of birth defects that resulted in a non-verbal, non-mobile and virtually non-thinking mass of life which still breathed, ate and digested. Kind of like a weed — a very stinking, thorny, messy weed that could sometimes start screaming its head off. When Michel was young, Gaston and his mother had been able to attend to the needs of this child together. But as Michel grew bigger, and Gaston found himself orphaned, the elder sibling discovered it was as much as he could do just to take care of himself (and he was frankly doing a piss poor job of that, at the time). To care for Michel's needs on top of everything else was pure hopelessness. Arrangements were made to have Michel sent away to the asylum, where he could be better looked after by the wise and capable d'Arque and his team.

When Gaston would drop by the asylum every few months to ensure that his brother hadn't been chained up in a closet and left to rot, he would inevitably get talking with Monsieur d'Arque — who was always too happy to share his transgressive worldviews with someone who wasn't looking to arrest him about them. On the day in question, Gaston had a particular matter he wanted to discuss, for it seemed like something the master of a madhouse could have some special insight about. It was something about himself that had been troubling him, especially in observing how strange it seemed when compared to everyone else around him: the lovers, the skirt-chasers, players, harlots, boy crazy, girl grabbing, sleazy, goat-fucking animals all around.

Endeavoring not to let on that there was any specific person he was asking about, he posited in a Gastonically casual manner:

"Did you ever have someone held in this place for not wanting to fall in love?"

D'Arque made little hesitation in his reply. "From time to time," he said with his typical coldness. "Usually women refusing an arranged marriage, or something like that. The family, maybe even the jilted lover, gets her committed here." He slugged down another glass of sherry and swiftly began to refill it from his decanter.

"But," said Gaston, trying to be sure he understood, "you're only taking them because someone's bribed you, you're saying?"

"I'm willing to consider holding anybody who has become somebody's problem," d'Arque answered carefully.

Gaston pursed his lips. These answers were good. Comforting. "So, the government wouldn't commit anyone here for something like that?"

"Certainly not. It's no danger to them."

"Would you think such a person was mad?" asked Gaston, who secretly harbored a very strong and severe personal interest in this answer.

"Not in the slightest," answered d'Arque. "If anything, love is what makes one go mad. 'Mad as a March hare' as is the saying."

One thousand one hundred and thirteen days after this conversation took place, Gaston found it ringing through his brain all anew.

The tavern had no clock, but all around the village the stroke of midnight was resounding. Within the bar room it was drowned by the loud voice of Gaston as he proclaimed with joy: "Right now I'm evolving a plan!"